


Falling Stars

by Anonymous



Category: Exalted
Genre: Court of Serenity, F/M, Night Caste, Not Beta'd, love on the high seas, my rough and tumble pair, still learning how to write the naughty stuff ok
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-04 21:24:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12779811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Tales of a Western Night Caste, his mortal lover, and a bunch of swearing and sweating (the good kind).





	1. Battle Makes Your Blood Run Hot

It was never gentle, not with Qismet. But she wanted it anyways. Some girls wanted the white knight, the roses, the courtships worthy of song and tale. But not Samira. She wasn’t built for that kind of life; the rough and the dirty suited her fine. Her man was kind, but not by nature. Cruel, but not by choice. And sometimes - both of them just needed the release.

The aft holds were mostly deserted after a sea battle. She knew what he’d want, wanted it too, and went there to wait for him while above the crew shouted and set the ship back to rights. She still had _some_ dignity, after all, and being caught in a passageway with her Eagle by crewmen she’d be beating up for the rest of the year to keep them shut about it was not in her plans. So she waited in the salt-smelling dim.

She didn’t have to wait long. The Veiled Eagle dropped down the ladder three steps at a time, his movements limned by the dusky violets and white-golds that were the remnants of his anima. Only a short while ago it had blazed in the evening sky - a hooded eagle that shadowed him as he dealt out an Exalted’s ideal of justice. Now it hugged him like plasma lightning clinging to a ship’s mast before a storm.

He could have called out to her, but he needed no such help to find her - a mortal, plain as day to his heightened essence-fueled senses. Samira forestalled him by stepping out of the gloom and directly into the arms he held open for her. She lifted her mouth to his, and he tasted of salt and iron blood and leather as he crushed her against him.

The deck creaked, the waves shushed, and seabirds cried beyond the curved bulkheads, but fire could have broken out beneath their feet, for all that they noticed anything beyond each other. He was still sweating from the fight under the burning western Sun, but she didn’t care - he was alive, and he was hers. He’d at least made an effort to wash a bit first; his face and hands were cool and damp and smelled of brine but they were scrubbed of soot and dirt and blood. She drew back a moment later with a nip at his lower lip. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” he said, huskily, into her braided hair, little puffs of warm breath rolling down her neck. “Scrapes. Are you?”

“You shielded me,” Samira replied. She didn’t have to say she didn’t need to be kept safe, or that she appreciated his care; all that he knew. He knew what she could handle, and the demons that had attacked them had been out of everyone’s league but his. The demon’s mortal Lintha companions - those she had handled.

“Good,” he said, and darted back down. The beaked hood that shadowed his face rasped against her nose and she flung it back, her hands continuing down the curve of his head, easily felt beneath the damp waves of his hair. With both hands wrapped against the back of his skull she kissed him, her lip catching on his teeth and his tongue insistent against hers.

The warm coal of desire she’d been carrying since the fight ended burst into full flame, tingling down through her hips and threatening to buckle her knees. She knew he felt similarly; the breath caught in his throat with a moaning purr and his knee pushed its way between hers. Samira ground her hips up his thigh, heedless of the blood and ichor that still stained his clothing, and he dug his fingers beneath her shirt, drawing prickles up her sides.  

“Bracers,” she warned him a moment later in a breath between kisses, biting gently at the thin scar that ran through the right side of his mouth. “I swear, Qismet, if you stab me again-”

“I won’t stab you.” He drew his hands out from under her shirt and worked at the buckles holding his bracers - and their hidden blades - on, throwing them one at a time to the side. Samira took advantage of his preoccupation, sliding her hands down the front of his cuirass and around to the fastenings, pulling them free by feel. Qismet ducked his head as she pulled cuirass, pauldrons, and tunic off him in one piece. They landed on the deck on top of the blades.

“I like to see you whole,” Samira murmured, grabbing his hips and drawing him closer again between her legs. Even with the pale threads of old scars, he was beautiful specimen of masculinity - lean and hard with the lithe muscles of an acrobat, picked out in relief by the fading sunlight. She drew her nails lightly up his chest, over the bump of his nipple. His anima flared briefly white and prickles raised on the skin of his arms. Qismet caught her wrist with one hand with a pleased growl, and she let him capture the other with a laugh.  He nudged her backwards against the one of the big water barrels that lined the hold, trapping her hands over her head.

“Mine,” he breathed, pulling her shirt from her beneath her belt with his free hand and working the buttons loose with his teeth. Samira squirmed beneath him; his breath on the skin of her belly was infuriatingly ticklish. Wordlessly she thrust her hips upward instead, rubbing against his pelvis. She could feel his hardness through the layers of cloth and leather separating them, and she wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

Qismet  growled, encountering her breastband, and yanked it down. Freed from their daily confinement, her breasts popped upward with a jiggle she thought was entirely inappropriate. Her lover apparently didn’t share her opinion, and fastened his mouth on her nipple.

“Aah, dammit, Qismet,” she panted, squirming under him. His teeth nipped gently against her skin, scraping frissons of sensation straight to her spine. He grinned his appreciation and switched sides, his anima clinging to her skin like staticky fireflies. Her open shirt was working its way upward with every movement, bunching up under her shoulderblades. He let her wrists go abruptly; Samira lifted a leg and hooked it over his hip. She arched her back, reaching behind her to undo the ties of her breastband and fling it aside, with the pleasant side-effect of thrusting her chest further into his face.

Qismet, with a heave of one knee and the firm grip of his hands on her hips, hiked her up further onto the barrel; half her rump resting on his thigh and her weight suspended by his strength. He let go of her breast, trailing kisses and bites down the side of her stomach as his hands crept up to the lacing of her trews. She managed to kick off her boots, but with her hands braced on his (lovely, muscular) shoulders, he didn’t leave her much choice of motion. She writhed. “Lemme down, or this is going to get one-sided, fast.”

“Don’t care,” he said with a nip and a lick across her pelvis bone, into the hollow of her stomach. “Wanna hear you moan.”

“Fuck you,” she replied as his clever fingers found their way into her pants and the moist heat of her, cupping her.

“That too.” There was the wicked grin that just showed the gleam of his teeth; a gleam she’d seen often in the shadowed recesses of  his hood. His elbow thunked down next to her head. She reached for him as he for her; his mouth closing on her squeal as he slid two fingers into the slick of her, his thumb resting lightly on her pearl.

They’d been together long enough that he knew how to make her move the way he wanted. She dug the fingers of one hand into his short hair as he began to stroke her pearl, his fingers shifting in and out maddeningly slowly. He pressed her back against the barrel, deepening the kiss. Her breath was coming in barely-voiced moans into his lips, her hips grinding against his hand blindly. She snuck her free hand down, past her own thigh, capturing the hard length of him through the cotton of his loose-cut trousers. Qismet growled at her, dragging his teeth down against her lower lip.

“Mine,” she panted. A low chuckle rose from his chest and he bore down on her, pressing in just the way... she...

“Aaaugh... dammit! Qismet-” The bright flower of euphoric pleasure bloomed there under his hand, rolling up her spine and overflowed from her throat in a long moan. The fingers withdrew and he let her down onto wobbly feet, kissing and nipping down the side of her neck.

“Don’t fall over,” he said into her skin, his voice gone throaty and rough, almost all language deserting him the further into desire he fell. “Not done yet.”

Sun was setting outside, having gone from deep orangey gold of early twilight down into pure reds, throwing long stripes of shadow across the hold as Qismet crossed to the ladder. He took two steps up and grabbed the hatch, drawing it down with a bang and a thud as he threw a locking bar into place. Samira smiled at him, almost sliding down against the barrel as the aftershocks rippled through her.  

“My turn,” Qismet purred, reaching her, stepping between her legs and pinning her with hips and weight. Their fingers mirrored each other, roaming over the other’s body. Qismet got his hands under the edges of her shirt and slid it down her arms and off, dropping it by their feet. Her pants followed shortly after; Qismet’s fingers tightened on the bare skin of her hips and she helpfully rolled them upwards against him. His breath came suddenly harsh against her collarbone; Samira turned her head slightly and nipped at his earlobe.

“Let’s have it, then.” The lacings of his own trousers were strained tight, but she hooked fingers through them and yanked, hard. The knots gave with a _pop_ and freed the dragon into her waiting palms. His trousers joined hers on the decking.

“Now,” he groaned, thrusting against, past her hands, sliding against the still-slick folds of her. “Need you now. Fuck me-”

“Do you know...” she said, as he got his hands on her ass and shoved her up, as she wrapped her legs around his back, his thighs. “...how long I’ve been waiting for you to say that today?”

“Fuck. Too long.” He found his way home with only a brief fumbling, and both of them cried out - him, a grunt of low effort; her the gasp of new pleasure - as he thrust to the hilt and held there. His closed teeth pressed hard against her shoulder as he ground against her; she could feel his scowl and the scrape of his stubble against her skin. Still riding the waves of her last high, Samira rolled her hips to better accommodate him, arching her back against him till her breasts rubbed against his chest, still tight and sensitive.

His arms were wrapped like iron around her waist, under her rump, keeping her up, and hers drew lines down the lean muscles of his back, roaming up to scrape against his skull and back down. He moved, then, stuttering jerks of his hips against hers, and she felt his scowl deepen and something approaching words form against her shoulder.

“Not working- Umph. Hold on-”

Qismet pulled her back with a stumbling step, and without withdrawing, dropped both of them onto the pile of discarded clothing. The cuirass ended up under her waist; its hard leather curves angling her up against him.  He grabbed at her hands and pinned them over her head so she’d squirm and wriggle as he bent his head to her breast.

“Ah - gods - right there, Qismet - fuck!” He’d shifted his knees and the thickness suddenly felt to fill her to completeness, brushing against just the right spot within to put the embers to blooming flames again.

Spurred on by her renewed moans in his ears and the trembling running down her legs, Qismet’s pace increased. The sound of the waves slapping the planking outside nearly masked the thudding of skin to sticky skin - they were both sweating freely in the tar-scented tomb of the hold, between the fight and the tropical heat, with no appreciable breeze in the storeroom to relieve the closeness. Her heart was beating in her ears as she rocked with him.

“Kiss me, dammit.” She knew the moment he approached that threshold she balanced on earlier as his rhythm grew irregular and rougher. Each stroke was accompanied by a groan and she dug her heels into him, encouraging him deeper. His lips tasted of salt and desire, the peculiar burnt-air taste of his anima; her kiss was a challenge - stay with me.

“Mmmm- fuck, I’m-” he moaned into her mouth, silenced by the thrust of her lips against him. The last few strokes were fast and deep, and she held him tightly against her, heedless of anything but him.

The shuddering release of his own pleasure rolled through him with the final flickering flares of his anima.

He lay on top of her for long moments after, as both their breathing and triphammer heartbeats eased, the sweat cooling on their shoulders finally. The hard edges beneath her made themselves annoyingly known and Samira extricated the armor from under her with a wriggle and a lift. Qismet grunted and groped blindly for his belt with one hand, somewhere in the tangled pile of discarded clothing and gear. He’d tucked his face beneath her chin, stirring the tiny hairs on her skin with each hot breath.

She squeezed, gently, with those muscles still enfolding him, and was rewarded with a gasp and teeth in her shoulder. “You can get off now, lump.”

“No,” Qismet said with another brief wicked gleam of teeth, dropping his full weight on to her and off his elbows for a moment. “Already did.”

“Oof-!” She smacked him in the shoulder.

Qismet withdrew with a long gratified groan, rocking back onto his heels. “Are you...?”

“I am,” she said, propping herself up on her elbows. “Satisfied?”

“Gods, yes. Love you, sparrow.” Qismet bent down and planted a kiss high on her inner thigh, prompting a flinch and a squeal from his lover. “Thanks.” He handed her a clean, if crumpled, square of linen fished from his belt pouch.

“Sorry about the laces.” Samira cleaned herself off and started gathering the scattered pieces of her clothing, setting herself more or less back to rights. Nothing had ripped this time, anyways, though she was going to be awhile picking splinters out of her shirt (and making Qismet extract them from her back, likely).  

“Don’t mind.” He was inspecting the stained remnants of his trousers. “These were ruined already. And I have extra cording.”

“Always prepared, hmm?”

“For this - always.” Qismet grinned, tossed his ruined trousers to one side and wrapped his wide crimson sash around his waist sarong-style instead. He jerked his chin at the hatch. “C’mon. You first.”


	2. Kindle Your Fire From My Heart

One would think - after the third time she ended up on the floor with a knife at her throat - she would learn not to wake him up unexpectedly. She’s still not sure where the knife came from; one of those peculiar Solar charms, perhaps, but there it is, pressed against her throat again, cool and sharp as volcanic glass.

It must be the challenge of it, why she kept trying - she could count the number of times she’d encountered him actually asleep on one hand. He always heard her coming.

His weight pinned her down and he had an arm across her chest, but his eyes were still glazed and wild from sleep. She loved the way his hair - too short to get a proper grip in - fell in sleep mussed waves, smudged every which way. She rolled her hips up against his leg and watched with pleasure as sense returned to his gaze. 

“Samira.” The knife flickered and disappeared in a quick movement of his arm, back to whatever hidden sheath it came from. He got to his feet and, with an offered hand, pulled her up into the circle of his arms. It took him a moment to find his proper voice and when he did it’s husky and deep, coming up out of the depths. “What... what time is it?” 

“I’m not sure. Somewhere in middle watch.” She laid her head on his bare chest - he slept in nothing more than a pair of old breeches, worn to softness - and revelled in the heat pouring off him. “I was cold, so I came to sleep with you.”

He just grunted and kissed the top of her head. “Bet you were.”

Qismet turned and fell back into his bed - he hated the ubiquitous ship’s hammocks with a passion, claiming they made him even sicker than a regular bunk - and held back the blanket in invitation. Samira wriggled out of her boots and damp outer layers with glee and slid in next to him. The bunk was short and narrow; to lay together they had to be half-curled on one side, but they were used to it. She tucked her toes beneath his calves and squeaked as he nipped her ear in retaliation for the cold digits.  

“Your hands better not be that cold,” he murmured, hooking her hips and snugging her rump back against him. 

“Find out,” she said, reaching up and snaking her fingers through his short hair, against his scalp and the bare skin of his ear and neck. 

“Dammit, Samira, where were you sleeping? On deck?” He snagged her hand and tucked it firmly under her own ribs, covering her arm with his in delicious heat. The small space beneath the blanket was slowly warming up and she was beginning to shiver with reaction. His bed - his clothes, really - always smelled of sea and ozone and that peculiar scent that was him; hints of sun warmed skin and smoke and sharp acid. 

“Standing watch, actually,” she murmured, turning slightly to nuzzle a cold nose against his bicep. “Rain came up; Sailing Master took over until the storm passes.” 

Qismet tilted his head as he listened to the patter of rain on the hull, his face going blank as he concentrated. After a moment, he sniffed the air like a hunting cat, wrinkling his nose at the scent of petrichor and the dampness of the air, then shrugged. “Won’t be bad. Might last till morning, but it won’t even knock anything over.” 

Samira stretched against him -- felt the dragon stir with interest -- and sighed. “How do you do that?”

“Solar secret,” he said into her hair, sliding his hand down her side and rucking up the long tunic she was wearing. She hummed in response, snugging her hips against his, and his hand dipped beneath the covering fabric, resting oh-so-close on the curve of her hip bone. Her own hand drifted down to cover his with the tiniest suggestive shift of her hips. He groaned, softly. “Don’t start if you’re not going to finish.”

Samira drew his hand down further, further, into the damp warmth of her with what was definitely no longer a suggestion and was definitely her starting something. She grinned into his arm and he set his teeth into her shoulder with a soft bite before hefting himself up a bit. “I thought you were cold. And wanted to sleep.”

“Warm me up,” Samira suggested, rolling onto her back and stretching slowly beneath him in a languorous wave of pliant flesh. 

“I’ll set you ablaze.” Qismet bent his head to kiss her. Power erupted from his skin; a plasma corona of pale violet and gold, and the touch of it against her skin was electrifying. She curled her fingers in it, drew it up to linger on her skin and shivered. It snaked around her limbs, pulsing in time with Qismet’s heart. 

She reached and started tugging his breeches down; he collapsed onto his side with an impatient huff and stripped them himself, wadding them up and stuffing them down at the end of the bunk. Samira opened to him as he rolled back on top of her, her shirt rucked up above her breasts and the corona of his solar anima pressing against her skin, covering her in sensation. “Not… that I want you to stop… but sometimes you cheat with that aura of yours.”

“Not made for fair fights,” Qismet murmured into her skin, his mouth hot on her ribs as he kissed his way up to her breasts. Each word was punctuated with a nip and a kiss, ending at her breasts where he set his teeth ever so gently on her sensitive nipples. “Made for dirty tricks and hunting.” 

“Mmmm,” Samira groaned. “No hunting tonight. Already yours.”

“Yes,” he agreed, turning his head and biting down into the flesh of her, just enough to leave a mark. “Mine. On your stomach, sparrow.” 

“Really?” She rolled her hips against his leg, teasing. Qismet growled and ducked again, setting his teeth somewhat less than gently on her breast, then kissed his way back up to her throat at her indignant squeal. 

“Roll. Over,” he murmured with a hint of steel in his voice, flaring his anima along his hands so tendrils of the plasma snaked into her hair with his fingers. She shuddered with the wash of goosebumps that fled across her skin at the touch. She sighed as it subsided, rolling complacently onto knees and elbows beneath him. “Mm. Better.”

Samira tucked his pillow and the rumpled mass of the blanket under her chest; he was as hot as a furnace, and the chill of the rain had dissipated in the heat of their incipient ardor. He traced hands down her back, along her sides, and she could see him shadowed in his own anima over her shoulder, dark against the pale violet light, the barest glow illuminating his soft expression and glinting from smiling bared teeth. 

“Are you going to admire all night, or are you going to do something about it?” she said, arching her back to shove her rump against his hips. 

“Who says I can’t do both? Gods, you’re delicious,” Qismet said. Then he was bent over her again, skin touching from rump to shoulderblades, his arms tight against her ribs on either side and his dragon hard and insistent between her thighs.  

The touch of his anima fire against her skin made her shiver and writhe. He flared it, in tiny bits and pieces, and he was so close above her that it curled and rolled over her, fog on cold Season of Air mornings and her the ocean. 

“Cheating…!” she gasped out. Everywhere the stuff touched left her sensitive and a little raw; demanding rapture from her nerves.

“Tell me you want me to stop, then,” he said into her back, his forehead pressed against her spine. The corona rippled with his amusement and he reached back, around her thigh, and guided himself inside with one smooth stroke. She clutched the pillow harder, moaning into it, when his hand didn’t withdraw, instead seeking out her pearl and stroking her with every thrust of his hips as he began. 

“Never, Eagle--don’t stop,” she said, arching her back in encouragement. 

He moved slowly against her; not that he could do much else in the small space of the bunk and her knees were already pressed against the bulkhead on one side and nearly falling off on the other. With the rock and sway of the boat, helpfully aligned on their axis, he almost didn’t have to move at all, and Samira moaned in frustration as he took his lazy, sweet time about it. He brought them both to the edge and held them there; no matter how much she tried to press back against him. 

“Cheating, rutting, tease,” she huffed into his pillow, and squeezed down around him.

“Told you I’d warm you up,” he said, bearing down with his fingers to make her moan in retaliation. The glow in the cabin dimmed as he let his anima fade down to foxfire on his shoulders and hair, still trailing down his fingers where his arm was wrapped firmly around her hips. 

“Oh, Gods… Qismet, please…!” 

“Please what, Sparrow?”

“I hate you, you asshole-- oh--! Fucking hell, Qismet, come on…!”

He grinned into her skin, kissing up her spine until she moaned and panted under him, unable to get any more words out.  His other arm, a solid bar keeping her from sliding straight out of the narrow bunk, was trembling, and she knew he was just as close to combustion as she was. He groaned at her voice, his pace quickening and his fingers stilling on her pearl in the depths of his own distraction. She gritted her teeth and forced out, “Aah, Qismet! Don’t… fucking… stop!”

“S-sorry,” he said, his voice husky and rough, stuttering through his panting breaths. He bit her shoulder; if it was pain she never felt it, just another thrill of sparks through her senses that poured down through her core and pooled in their joined flesh. “Oh, fuck--”

His anima flared as he crested, taking her along with it. The pale violet light bathed the room in shimmering reflections, turning their cabin into a private underwater sanctum.

Qismet withdrew after a few long moments breathing deeply into her skin, dropping onto his side and pulling her over with him. His anima faded down to only the empty gold circle on his brow, and Samira shivered as the sensations faded along with the trembling shocks of afterglow.

“Warm now?” he finally murmured, and she turned her head to listen to the hammer of his heart. 

“Yess,” she said with a languorous smile, flushed from cheeks to toes. Without looking, she reached over the side of the bed and into the drawers built under the bunk. She found clean smallclothes and a rag, accomplished the necessary adjustments, and curled in close to him as he finished dragging his own breeches back on. “Love you, Qismet.”

“Love you too,” Qismet murmured as he curled around her, drawing the blanket up and draping it over them. He tucked an arm around her. “Go to sleep.”

“Mmm. With you, now I can.”


End file.
